'97 5-spd Maxima, first carputer attempt...

wasyed · 04-30-2006, 01:19 AM

Aight this would be a "newbie" install of a comp in the car. so first let me begin by saying what most people end up saying... this is something I been wanting to do for a very very long time. Knight Rider inspired me while I was younger, then came my usb gps reciever I got for my laptop since I loved travelling.. thats when i started thinking.. hey why can't I install a computer inside the car... did some google searching and eventually found out people actually did do it. Thats when I found mp3car.com, WOW what a site and wow some smart people on here. so Time went on blah blah blah and I started to get more involved into and started purchasing parts.. everyones story is generally the same more or less so I'll just jump to main stuff

the car
the car being used is my trusty 1997 Nissan Maxima. It's 5-spd, and 5 spd with 6 cyl. is an awesome combination. lol I drove it a lot so I have about 204,000 miles on it right now, but i swear anyone take a drive and you'll think it has well below that. It's amazing how it still drives strong and clean. I've always used synthetic oil and most the time use premium gas and to save that extra buck I do as much as I can on my own instead of going to the mechanic. I baby this car like crazy which is probably why its still in great running condition and great shape. the car itself is pebble beige and I have nice ray-ban tints that go pretty good with the car, kind of cuts down my cell phone and gps signals tho.

the system
for the computer here's what I have along with prices as of now:
Jetway 615DF mini-itx motherboard w/1.2 GHZ celeron...
2 x 256 mb= 512mb sdram sticks...
20GB 2.5" hard drive (for windows and programs)...
80GB 3.5" hard drive (for media)...
lilliput 629gl 7" touchscreen...
m2-atx power (I assume this is good enough)...
belkin vga extension cable...
10awg wire... found in house
audio fed through my alpine head unit
netgear wireless usb adapter:

So far so good, saved some money I think. I bought the stuff slowly over time so it didnt feel like I spent much really. most of the money I saved up over about 1.5 to 2 years so it literally felt like I didnt spend money. the free stuff is because I used to sell hard drives and ram on ebay and after I made a decent profit I kept those drives and memory. not sure if the 3.5 is going to juice out too much from the battery but if it does I'll eventually change that to two 2.5" 40 gigs. the lilliput I got a good deal on at the time I bought it because they were all going for much more before, not sure how much theyre going for now but back a few months ago I kept an eye open at this one seller that was selling a few each week for a lot lower then his normal prices and I missed the sale he did for 179.99 plus 10 shipping and this was the second best I could find. m2-atx I wish it didnt cost so much but I guess itll be worth it if it works properly. And the extension cable for vga I picked up at some wholesale store while visiting my brother in boston. so what do you guys think? good spending so far? Oh and I wont have an optical drive yet, if at all. I guess I'll think about it some more.

After months I'm finally starting my install and so far I have the screen mounted with the help of my dad last week. It was a nice feeling having him help me, originally I wasnt going to ask and instead he ended up volunteering to help and he got out the dremel and other stuff and we did a simple mount right into the dash.

the case I got done during the week in between my homework and studying. Originally I was going to use acrylic but found some nice aluminum sheets at home depot. each piece was around 6 bucks and is 1ft by 1ft. I got 3 of these sheets and it turned out ok I guess.

I'll have pictures up soon for whats done so far, right now I'm tired out and ready to hit the bed.

any suggestions, comments, or warnings will be greatly appreciated!

Also I'm curious what people think of the 3.5" drive and 1.2 ghz processor as far as the m2-atx is concerned. From what I see on the forums, it seems to be an ok setup to run on a m2-atx. If no one has a comment I'll do a test setup that way and let everyone know.

wasyed · 04-30-2006, 11:55 PM

Ok so heres the car the computer is being installed into..

ADMINISTRATOR: IMAGE DELETED

This is the area where the screen will be installed, the great thing about the 4th generation maximas is that they actually have 3 dins, 2 will take up the screen on the top and then 1 will take up my alpine HU which will be moved down where the second compartment is

Here's the screen fitted onto the dash area. I didnt really want to bondo and make it look factory honestly. Mainly because I want to be able to take it out and have it still like new and also because my alpine sticks out a little anyways and now it just looks a bit more uniform i think. Maybe over the summer I'll bondo and flush install it but as for now I'm way too busy with classes. it actually doesnt look too bad, right?

Heres the back view:

The thing is I had to dremel the bezel a bit in order to help make it fit better so the bezel itself is pretty much mutilated if I take off the screen.. luckily theres plenty of bezels around for dirt cheap so I'm gonna hopefully pick one up off ebay or something. My dad did an awesome job helping here with the dremel work.

This is what I been looking at lately when driving the past few days while I was too lazy to put my dash back in..

the 80 gb 3.5" drive that will hold all the media, still a little worried on if this will juice out too much from the battery or not. Hopefully it should be fine. I found these little wings to put on the drive to help spread the heat away from the drive.

the aluminum sheets that are being used to build the case..

the motherboard with processor and memory, at first I used acrylic so thats why this picture still has the acrylic board affixed to it.

and of course the case right now, made of aluminum with aluminum tape for the corners and edges..

open view...

since heat rises, and also because of size situations, I decided to put the hard drive closest to the top and attached it to the door of the case with clamps and this way most of the heat will travel out the aluminum top. I also put some fishing wire to act as a stop for the case lid so it doesnt fly open and slam on the floor whenever I open the lid up. the 2.5" drive is actually also gonna go here which will probably be hanging off the 3.5", in other words right below it.

the inside view...

over here you can sort of see that the cpu fan is pointed inward. What I would like to do in a few days when I get a chance is turn that fan around and put a hole on the side of the case so that all heat from the cpu is blown directly out of the case. I might use a tube and just direct the air flow right out so that the case can still remain pretty much sealed.. if that makes sense.

Thats it for now, this project is going a lot faster then I thought it would. So far the project probably only took 4 hours, but it was over the span of 2 weeks because of exams and other school crap. I guess it helped that I planned everything out in advance. the windows and everything is already installed with a customized windows install I'm about to change the winlogin to minlogin right befor I go to sleep and see how much faster thatll make the windows. As of right now I have IGuidance, frodoplayer, and Delorme. I like using frodoplayer instead of winamp mainly because winamp has such small letters with just about any skin I tried so far. Also I love frodo's interface for everything with the brightlife skin so frodoplayer it is!
More updates tomorrow hopefully!
any comments? suggestions?

wasyed · 05-01-2006, 12:04 AM

I might end up having tons of pictures by the end of my project, hopefully I wont slow down and 56k users...

lol oh well.

I just got done with the minlogin... oddly it didn't help much. Obviously the first boot took long, but the second, third and so on only made the boot 1 to 3 seconds faster each time, Am I doing something wrong??? I think Ill just switch it back to the winlogin to avoid any issues with suspend or anything like that that people were having trouble with before.

well tomorrow hopefully I'll wire everything up and have the system up and running inside the car instead of this big mess I have on my desk in my home.

wasyed · 05-01-2006, 04:43 PM

well the wiring is going ok. I first wanted to put the pc under the passenger seat or somewhere up front so at first I bought an 18awg wire (later switched to 10, very important!) wire but then I realized the fan would be waaay too loud to put anywhere in the passenger areas. the fan spins at around 7000rpm so its a fast fan and kinda has a loud whistle to it but this is good for the cpu. So the solution is of course put the system into the trunk and thats better anyways because the computer should be as fast away from the engine as possible from what my older brother said. luckily the vga cable extension I got is long enough to run all the way back and I have a usb extension for the touchscreen. It'll probably be less heat in the summer back there too presumably.
I really dont have to worry too much about heat in summer though because everywhere I go theres a parking garage. There's a garage at school that I park in when I get a chance, at home my car is always garaged, whenever I go to the mall I always park in the garage as well. And at worked we have a cooled and ventilated garage that only employees have access to with a remote and key (Govt. jobs are great!). So the only real heat that I have to pay attention to is the system heat itself.

So the wiring starts from under the hood like this:

the wire goes up to the corner of the fender where theres a small passage that I can feed the wire through in the gap where the door opens and where all the wires for the windows and speakers pass through.
first from the hood:

then through the area I was talking about.

the next part was sort of a pain, to get the wire through that hole above to the drivers pedal area. After a little pushing and moving around stuff I finally managed to bring the wire out and down like below

and then down through the carpet where the doors kick panel is. under the panel and under the carpet straight to the back I sent the wire.

After debating and reading a couple of posts i switched the 18 awg to a 10 awg. I took out the back seat which I'll have posted in my next post with the rest of the wiring. I also have to paint my gps reciever the color of my car so its less noticeable and looks more factory from the outside. otherwise someone might go right up to it and be like hey its a gps reciever and rip it out or something... who knows.

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 06:51 PM

heres where the wire is fed through the door kick panel thing, This is where I took out the 18 awg wire completely and switched to the 10 awg wire (the blue wire shown):

and then through the seat. The seat is taken out in this picture:

the wire is taken through below the seat and then it goes in back through a couple of gaps between the trunk and the back seats. For anyone else with a maxima thats planning on doing this you can feel the gaps with your hand and feed it through but in the back you gotta make sure to lift up the plastic/cardboardish cover in order to get the wires out properly. below you can see the black carboard/plastic type thing that you have to lift up in order to help get the wire fed through

heres the rest of the wires, this is all after lifting the carpet from the trunk:

just the blue wire is coming from the door area and from the positive side of the battery, the rest of the wires here are going through the middle of the car under where the center console is. the silver is a usb extension cable and the long black wire is the vga extension. the red wire I have as the switched source. this wire is going to be connected to the cigerrette lighter so that the comp recieves a signal that the car is on. the other wire way in the back (the shortest one) is the audio wire which has a 3.5" end that plugs into the computer and the other end has rca connections which will head back to the alpine head unit using the AI-NET interface.
around where you see the vga cable is where I'm going to ground the system. I first scrapped up the paint as shown in the picture below here and then went and drilled a hole so i can just screw in the negative wire using a connector at the end of the wire. I took the picture before drilling the hole so its not in the pic.

heres how the car is when the center console is removed, all the wires are fed from below the carpet and inside of the center console. The wires arent in this picture but to give you an idea the wires are under the carpet and come up through the openings you see in this carpet and straight to the monitor and head unit that u see on top of the picture. For anyone wondering what that box is, its just the airbag unit.

Heres below is a close up of some of the wires. You can see the black wire on the right, thats the vga cable. And right next to the black wire is the red wire which is the wire I tapped into the cigerrette lighter wire for the start signal. Later on I would like to put a switch on this so that I can have the car on without having the computer on when necessary or to easily turn the computer off by switching off the connection from this so it can safely shut down. Originally I was going to put the switch on the wire coming from the battery but then I realized that wont help because if I ever switch off the computer that way it just kills the computer and forces a hard shutdown instead of sending the computer into a complete, safe shut down. the red and white rca plugs on teh left side you see are the rca cables coming from the comp and into the alpine head unit.

below is a a close up view, I bought a second cigerrette lighter outlet so I can plug in the monitors car adapter, this way I dont need to splice any wires up so I can still keep the lilliput stuff like factory. This makes it nice and clean and pretty easy. and I bolted this on the shifter plate to keep it stable if anyone is wondering.

and finally the computer system is put in the trunk. And for the wires I used quick disconnects so I can be able to take the computer out easily for maintanence and whatever. the wire u see going to the trunk door is for the gps. At the momment I kept the gps on the trunk top but will later on put it on the top of the car. I also need to paint it the color of the car so that it looks more factory on the outside. This way itll just look like one of those antennas found on newer cars or xm recievers. the wire is taped back for now in order for the trunk to close properly with the wire or else sometimes more of the wire comes out when i close the trunk and I have to pull the wire before closing it. The tape will allow me to just close the trunk without paying attention to it. Originally I wanted to put the gps reciever inside the car but the issue is with my Ray-Ban tints, blocks the signal of the gps completely.

and the closed trunk view:

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 06:55 PM

Next I'm going to work on having usb ports and the switch for the computer up front, right under the lilliput. Most likely I'm going to cut up the popout ashtray in front in order to do this, or maybe it would be better if I just put the stuff inside the ashtray that way its less obvious from the outside. I'm definately going to build a cover for the screen so it doesn't look like I have a screen in the car.

donavanaccord · 05-02-2006, 07:03 PM

nice job sooo far

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 07:11 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by donavanaccord

nice job sooo far

Thanks, I was begining to wonder why no ones leaving any comments yet lol. Now I feel better lol

gameboy · 05-02-2006, 07:26 PM

18 AWG is way way way to small of a gauge wire to use for this, at a MINIMUM you need to be running 10 AWG, prob more like 8 ga ( get an amp install kit )

you do have a fuse with in 1 ft of the battery right? if not you can potentialy set your car on fire(esp running 18 ga)
http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
2.3 amps max, your hard drive prob sucks more then that.

other then that it looks good.

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 07:49 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by gameboy

18 AWG is way way way to small of a gauge wire to use for this, at a MINIMUM you need to be running 10 AWG, prob more like 8 ga ( get an amp install kit )

you do have a fuse with in 1 ft of the battery right? if not you can potentialy set your car on fire(esp running 18 ga)
http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
2.3 amps max, your hard drive prob sucks more then that.

other then that it looks good.

yeah I think I mentioned it above, but i took out the 18 awg wire and put in a 10awg. the picture just shows the 18 awg because thats what I did first when i first put the wire in, but a few hours later I put in a 10 awg wire. The blue wire you see in the trunk is the 10 awg wire coming from the battery. And yeah i forgot to mention I put a 20amp fuse near the battery, its probably no more then 3 inches away from the battery. So yeah no worries I dont have a 18 AWG wire its 10. the only place I use the 18 is where I have the signal coming from the cigerrette lighter which I assume should be fine(?) since its not really a power source to power the comp. Should I switch that too you think? oh and also the wires coming out of the power supply I used the ones that came with the power supply, I assumed I dont need to switch that to 10 awg, am I right? its no more then like i dont know 4 inches i guess.

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 07:51 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by wasyed

After debating and reading a couple of posts i switched the 18 awg to a 10 awg. I took out the...

yup it was at the end of that post

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 09:54 PM

just to avoid any confusion:

I switched out the 18 awg wire and put a 10 awg wire in instead because of length reasons. I have also put this inline fuse with a 20A fuse as recommended in another thread. Thanks gameboy for helping clear it up, and that site you sent me helped some more. I should probably switch the fuse to 15A instead or even better switch out the 10 awg and put in 8 awg from what I understand from that site you sent me.

wasyed · 05-02-2006, 10:17 PM

Heres an update, took the car out for a drive for a good hour... everything is running great! (yeah I know, not the best time to take an hour long drive considering gas prices and all.) I have no problems with the system but do have an issue with the sound! ack! stupid thing is annoying me, when I raise the volume it sounds like anakins pod racer from star wars episode 1 when it got a little beat up. I think I need a ground loop filter? its a weird continuous thumping sound and not a whine. I know for the whine noise u need the filter but would it help my issue? or is it better to invest in a higher quality rca cable because im using a basic one right now? I'm wondering if grounding the system to the car had anything to add to the noise... aside from the noise my system is running great even when running movies off the 3.5" hard drive. WOOHOO!

Desktop:

Here's the shot of frodoplayer:

IGuidance navigation software inside the frodo:

Netgear WG111U 802.11 a/b/g 108MBPS wireless usb adapter for the wireless internet and home networking so i can transfer files between my car and home desktop:

by the way, only $21 at a computer fair (cogan computer fairs for anyone in the north east)

and mini keyboard for whenever I dont feel like using the touch screen on-screen keyboard for input:

system still needs to be cleaned up because I dont like how the case looks in the trunk, and I still have to clamp it down somehow so the case doesnt bang around.

sweetbluesky · 05-03-2006, 09:09 AM

WOW. this is great stuff! I knew that it would be difficult but i didnt realize the challenge you faced, however u have done extremely well and i am very proud of u! keep up the GREAT work

mmk999 · 05-03-2006, 12:04 PM

Hey man - it looks pretty damn clean - and especially for your first time doing it!

I have the same year, same color Maxima only mine's an auto. I have my PC mounted under the passenger seat but my next upgrade will be to move it to the trunk. Wires sticking out from under the seat have been bugging me!

Question for ya - how did you get the lilli mounted into the dash? I was wondering if you had any more photos showing how you did that. I'd definitely be interested in seeing your exact steps (if it's not too much trouble)!

Later!